Set Your Sights on Science Sites (and learn why fecal matter matters)!

This week it was our mission to find a website that is geared toward teaching science, or one that is geared towards students who want to learn about science-- and I was fortunate enough to discover one that meets both those requirements!

After peeping the wonderful resource SCIENCE NETLINKS on Tracey's fabulous blog, I found a link to a great website created by the US Environmental Protection Agency called ENVIRONMENTAL KIDS CLUB (http://www.epa.gov/kids/). This site is awesome because it appeals to children who have an interest in the natural world (pretty much all kids), and it presents science info in fun and interactive games, pictures, and stories. One interesting topic I found for kids was called "Sewage in Your Face," which is described as "getting to the bottom of sewage in a fun and interactive way!"
In this activity children learn what sewage is and where it goes from flush, to throughout the treatment plant process, and beyond.
There are even recipes for making food that looks like raw sewage (yummy fake sludge cakes)!! Maybe this was the inspiration for the Modern Toilet Restaurant in Taipei! This original toilet-themed restaurant serves chocolate ice cream that has an eerie resemblance to you-know-what... could you eat out of a toilet-shaped bowl?

And don't forget to answer the sewage poll on which bodily function is the loudest- a burp, sneeze, or fart?

Another helpful aspect of the Environmental Kids Club site, is the section devoted just to teachers which includes links to other science resources, lesson plans, activities, ways to apply for grants, and much more!

Poo on you if you don't check it out!!

She Blinded Me with Science

She Blinded Me with Science video--check it out if you've never seen it! Before taking this course (Elementary Science Methods), I never considered myself as a “scientist” or even a person who liked science. I'm an artsy girl, or a poet, not a scientist. Thinking of science conjures up imagines of dissecting animals in biology class (yuck!) or chemistry formulas I could never get right. When I think of a scientist, I think of a technician in a lab coat recording data from test tubes. Sure it’s a bad stereotype, but who wasn’t thinking of Einstein? But science is more than dead old white guys (which makes me think of a great book "Even the Rat Was White"), my professor explained that being a scientist is all about asking questions; questions about the natural world. That’s when a light bulb went off in my head-- because I do that, I ask questions! So think about it, have you ever… looked at the sky? Wondered about something? Took something apart to figure it out? Thought about changing seasons? Enjoyed learning about animals or nature, dinosaurs, planets? Or maybe you thought the moon was following you as a kid… or maybe that was just me…

So, are those things science? You bet your Bunsen burner they are! Do you have a DVD player, a computer, a cell phone, an iPod? Science my dear boy - it's all thanks to science. Wear jewelry? Those are minerals and metals. Did you eat today? Science; it's what's for dinner! Did you enjoy the film Frankenstein? Apollo 13? Beautiful Mind? Happy Feet? Spiderman 3? Ice Princess? Twister? Finding Nemo? Avatar? What these films have in common? Science, that’s right they’re science flicks!

Ok, now think about much of a science geek you are or you could just take this quiz.

So as for me, my science adventure began when I was a little kid catching frogs in my grandmother’s yard with my cousins, learning about whales (I think I knew every species when I was 7), learning about plants from my mother’s garden, I loved going to the aquarium, the zoo, the Museum of Natural History (or as my dad called it, the Museum of Nostril History),the planetarium (space ice cream, yum!), learning about rainbows, watching National Geographic movies with my sisters, and later learning about Darwinism and evolution, psychology and social and behavioral sciences, nutrition and ecology.

All throughout childhood I was learning about science from my dad’s love of reptiles, my mom’s love of butterflies, my sister’s love of plants and horticulture, my other sister's love of beauty products, and my step-dad building things and testing products as prototype developer.

When I was growing up I spent my summer vacations living on my dad’s houseboat in Huntington Harbor and my sisters and I would catch minnows, row to the beach to find horseshoe crabs, feed the swans Cheerios and do all sorts of natural observations. We watched Bill Nye and Beakman’s World and we loved science, we just didn’t know it!

Now I have a daughter and she loves to play with water, catch falling leaves, to go to the aquarium, and look at the moon. She loves watching Dinosaur Train, Zula Patrol, Sid the Science Kid, and Curious George. Like George, science is all about being curious- so what are you curious about?

So now I'm feelin' pretty darn scientific! And the next time someone asks me what a scientist looks like, I'll just look in the mirror!